Silly Kids

I've been waiting for the day when Noah and Avery would finally start playing together fairly well. I still have to keep a watchful eye, but Avery is getting more sturdy and less breakable. They play pretend together. Avery likes to round up all her dolls and stuffed animals into one area and then take care of them. She has bottles and pretend fruit and vegetables to feed them. Noah is big into his work tools, so his sister is as well. Together they fix (bang on) all kinds of things. I try to keep them from banging too hard on the walls and direct them towards less dentable surfaces.

We eat a lot of blueberry jam. I try and make sure Avery is shirtless or wearing purple when I feed her blueberries. She doesn't tolerate a bib, so I gave up early on. We still have two flats of mixed raspberry and blueberry jam and syrup. I don't think it will last till berry picking season, but it should get us into summer. I open an eight ounce jar of jam every other week at least which doesn't sound like much, but at the moment we have four types of homemade jam opened as well as a jar of lemon curd. We eat a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but I am pretty sparing on the jelly with the kids, heavy on the peanut butter. We also eat jam on popcakes. I've been brewing kombucha and adding blueberry and raspberry syrup to the tea to increase it's yummyness. I'll be posting about the health benefits and my experiences with kombucha soon.

We still have an ailing chicken in our house. Tonight we've moved her closer to the woodstove with a light bulb above her. She also has a '"hot hand" hand warmer under her rear in hopes that if she is egg bound all the warmth will loosen her up. Over the last couple days I've thought she was going to die any minute, and then she perks up and starts making chicken noises, so I'm clueless really. I did reach up with a finger and see if I could feel anything without success. 

Other than that, not much new around here. Finished up the last of the seed ordering. Waiting on chicks. Watching the first of the early herb seeds germinate and begin to grow. Been feeling rather motivated in the kitchen. Over the last few days I've made jerky, fruit leather, bread, crackers, cookies and regular meals. We've been either making smoothies or juicing carrots daily. I've been sneaking frozen kale into the smoothies, and nobody has noticed, ha! We got our new mill in the mail, so I've been using fresh ground whole wheat and spelt in all our baked goods. I took some pictures of the mill and flour so I'll be sharing those experiences soon as well.